ely in
this, that the exercise of his faculties was bounded within the ways,
modes, and notions of his own country, and never directed to any other
or further inquiries. And if he had not any idea of a God, it was only
because he pursued not those thoughts that would have led him to it.

13. Ideas of God various in different Men.

I grant that if there were any ideas to be found imprinted on the minds
of men, we have reason to expect it should be the notion of his Maker,
as a mark God set on his own workmanship, to mind man of his dependence
and duty; and that herein should appear the first instances of human
knowledge. But how late is it before any such notion is discoverable in
children? And when we find it there, how much more does it resemble the
opinion and notion of the teacher, than represent the true God? He that
shall observe in children the progress whereby their minds attain the
knowledge they have, will think that the objects they do first and most
familiarly converse with are those that make the first impressions on
their understandings; nor will he find the least footsteps of any other.
It is easy to take notice how their thoughts enlarge themselves, only as
they come to be acquainted with a greater variety of sensible objects;
to retain the ideas of them in their memories; and to get the skill to
compound and enlarge them, and several ways put them together. How, by
these means, they come to frame in their minds an idea men have of a
Deity, I shall hereafter show.

14. Contrary and inconsistent ideas of God under the same name.

Can it be thought that the ideas men have of God are the characters and
marks of himself, engraven in their minds by his own finger, when we see
that, in the same country, under one and the same name, men have far
different, nay often contrary and inconsistent ideas and conceptions of
him? Their agreeing in a name, or sound, will scarce prove an innate
notion of him.

15. Gross ideas of God.

What true or tolerable notion of a Deity could they have, who
acknowledged and worshipped hundreds? Every deity that they owned above
one was an infallible evidence of their ignorance of Him, and a proof
that they had no true notion of God, where unity, infinity, and
eternity were excluded. To which, if we add their gross conceptions
of corporeity, expressed in their images and representations of their
deities; the amours, marriages, copulations, lusts, quarrels, and other
mean q